Contrasting subjective judgement and objective tests in the hearing-impaired

The Hearing Performance Inventory (HPI, Giolas et al., 1979) was used to measure 21 moderately hearing-impaired persons' subjectively experienced problems in everyday listening. The HPI rating data show that the greatest problems are experienced on the dimensions 'understanding speech without visual cues', and 'perceived intensity' of sounds. 'Understanding speech with visual cues' has a high positive correlation with both 'social situation' and 'work situation' dimensions, whereas 'understanding speech without visual cues' correlates with 'social' and 'personal situation'. The correlations between the HPI and actual performance in the speechreading tests, and between the HPI and cognitive abilities that were assumed to be critical for speechreading ability, were also examined. It was found that vocabulary size, highly intercorrelated with guessing, was important to the 'social situation' dimension on the HPI. Guessing also constitutes an important cognitive predictor of speechreading skill. However, none of the HPI dimensions was directly related to objective communicative competence. Given the limitations of speechreading training, the data suggest that vocabulary and social skills should be focused on during communicative training.